Dr. Phil says professor’s call for $350,000 to every black descendant of slaves ‘absolute disaster’

Dr. Phil warned Tuesday that an economics professor’s plan to pay $350,000 in reparations to 40 million descendants of slaves would be “an absolute disaster,” arguing that giving a lump sum isn’t the best way to help someone .

The television host on Tuesday invited William Darity of Duke University, who co-authored the book “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.”

Darity suggested that the US government spend the funds in much the same way it sent checks to millions of Americans during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, amounting to $14 trillion.

Dr. Phil disputed Darity’s plan on psychological grounds.

“I can tell you from a psychological perspective that if you take $350,000 or $840,000, and you write a check to a group of people — black, white, poor, homeless, whatever — you give a group of people that much money and says, “there you go, good luck,” come back in six months, they’re broke,” he said.

“Whatever reparations are made would be an absolute disaster, as opposed to guidance and assistance in creating wealth for generations, as opposed to income.”

Darity accused Dr. Phil of unfairly preventing black people from accessing what was rightfully theirs.

“Nobody ever says there will be mismanagement of funds when we talk about distributing reparations to other communities,” Darity said.

The TV doctor replied, “I just said it.

“I just said, if you give that money to someone, they’re going to mismanage it. They’re going to ruin it.”

He added: “Look at the fraud that just happened with all the money given in support of COVID.”

Darity had suggested that checks could be mailed, similar to those handed out during the pandemic.

“It would be paid for by the federal government in the same way that the federal government paid for the expenses that were paid to try and cope with the great recession and also, most recently, the economic downturn associated with the major pandemic” , he said.

Darity said that if the $14 trillion were split evenly among 40 million people whose ancestors were in the slavery system, it would be about $350,000 per person.

Professor William Darity teaches economics at Duke University. On a Tuesday panel from the Dr. Phil show, he argued that the US federal government should spend $14 trillion on a massive recovery program for 40 million black Americans.

He said the amount “should be determined by the wealth disparity between black and white Americans, which currently exceeds $840,000 per household.”

Darity said the program’s “goal” would be to “eliminate the racial wealth gap in the United States.”

The U.S. government currently has more than $31 trillion in debt.

Political writer Joshua Ferguson, who was also part of the panel with Dr. Phil, said the country was unable to pay the huge recovery bill.

“First of all, the US government has no money,” Ferguson said.

“All their money comes from taxes. To say that you don’t take it from people today, you are right. You are going to take over from future generations.’

Noted author and civil rights activist Bob Woodson also criticized Darity’s plan, saying, “I can’t think of any group of people who got rich just by transferring money to them.”

There are just over 40 million black Americans in the US, so Darity’s figure assumes they are all descended from American slavery.

However, according to a Pew Research Center study as of April 2022, only 57 percent of Black Americans believe they are descendants of American slavery.

Darity said the program would operate similarly to the COVID payments millions of Americans are receiving. The payments would ultimately be felt by current and future taxpayers

The idea of ​​compensating Black Americans for slavery-era sins has been floated countless times over the years.

In January, San Francisco proposed paying every old black resident $5 million, causing an uproar.

Cities such as Boston, Massachusetts, St. Paul, Minnesota and St. Louis, Missouri, as well as Los Angeles, have set up task forces and panels to develop their own recovery plans.